QKolkata: Mamata To Meet Modi; Rajeev Skips Second CBI Summon

An unexpected meeting has been scheduled in New Delhi between Mamata Banerjee and Narendra Modi on Wednesday afternoon following a request from the Bengal chief minister.

If the meeting takes place as scheduled, it will be their first formal interaction since Modi returned to power with a spectacular mandate.

Sources in Nabanna said the chief minister’s office had sent a letter seeking an appointment with the Prime Minister. The confirmation arrived on Monday. The meeting is scheduled for 4:30pm on Wednesday.

Former Kolkata police commissioner Rajeev Kumar did not turn up before the CBI on Monday, the second time in three days, even as the battle of nerves tensed up between the central agency and the state.

The CBI claimed Kumar was “elusive”; the state said he was on leave till 25 September, and his ‘leave address’ remained 34, Park Street.

On Monday, the battle also moved to the legal front: CBI filed a caveat in the Supreme Court seeking to counter any move by Kumar there. The agency’s sources also indicated that it may move the Barasat special court hearing the Saradha matter on Tuesday with a plea to issue a summons (as witness) to Kumar. If Kumar does receive a court summons and still does not turn up, the next step would be an arrest warrant in his name.

Calcutta-based driver with a multinational courier service firm traced his son, who suffers from a mental illness and had been untraced for 19 months, while watching news on Doordarshan.

Thirteen-year-old Sahil Shaw, kept at a shelter home in Nadia’s Nakashipara, is expected to be handed over to parents Kartick and Suman Shaw on Thursday by the district administration.

On Friday night, Calcutta Doordarshan broadcast news on Moslem Munshi, an employee of the state sericulture department in Nadia’s Nakashipara who runs Nirmal Hriday, a home for persons with mental afflictions at his home.

Kartick was watching the news at his Ahiritola home in Calcutta and spotted son Sahil among the inmates at the home and contacted officers of the anti-human trafficking Wing in Lalbazar probing the disappearance of the boy. The sleuths obtained the details from Doordarshan and got in touch with Nirmal Hriday.

The Bengal BJP is looking for a “big-ticket” Durga Puja in Calcutta for Union home minister and party chief Amit Shah to inaugurate this festive season.

State BJP sources said Shah himself had expressed a desire to open at least two to three pujas in Bengal.

“We, however, think it would not be possible for him to inaugurate more than one puja during his visit to Calcutta considering the security arrangements involved. We are yet to finalise any and are still searching for a big-ticket Puja that would suit his stature,” said a BJP leader.

An auto driver, who found a purse that a woman had forgotten in the vehicle on Sunday, tracked down her husband’s contact from her Metro Cash and Carry membership card and handed the bag — all its contents, including cash and multiple cards, intact — to him on Monday.

Moumita Saha (36), immunization coordinator at Institute of Child Health in Park Circus, accidentally dropped the purse in the auto being driven by Amit Saha (37) on the Jadavpur-Mukundapur route on Sunday morning, when she was on her way to hospital for an emergency meeting. She had boarded the auto from near Santoshpur Jorabridge, alighted at the EM Bypass crossing and hopped on to a Park Circus-bound bus.